


a storm is threatening

by marchadelorca



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Angst, Beating, Boys Kissing, Homophobia, M/M, POV Dante Quintana, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, a though one, is it graphic? idk maybe it is, it's /that/ horrible scene so, so much fucking angst, sorry :/ - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29671026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchadelorca/pseuds/marchadelorca
Summary: "Don't go, don't go, don't go, don't--Pinches maricones de mierda.The storm of emotions falls on him, it was just a shot away from being shot. The downpour tastes of a body suddenly letting go, a kiss that is still impregnated and cut off by fear, another boy running."ORthe most horrible scene of the book from Dante's pov this time.
Relationships: Aristotle Mendoza/Dante Quintana, Daniel G/Dante Quintana, I HATE DANIEL but it's the kiss, the real mf, the real otp - Relationship
Kudos: 10





	a storm is threatening

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from _**this**_ song. many many references of it in the work as well:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeglgSWKSIY

The boy doesn’t run. He learns that the world wears white before it wants to die.

Not black.

The hesitation in eternity knows itself to be pale, dyes the body of an inevitable whiteness. It overwhelms the mind of the purple of its body, it is situated, it is abstracted, it returns from the idea that it has been so undone. So corrupted.

The boy is corrupted.

He lives on the edge of hecatomb and a knowingly created stillness, it hurts and he knows and remembers the moments before -- he doesn't want to do it. He doesn't want to do it.

And they ask him, a hundred times until words are forced out of his battered mouth, the one exposed to all kinds of insanity that has claimed his legitimate innocence.

“Why didn't you run, damn it, why didn't you run!!!?”.

The boy doesn’t run, but is ashamed.

Bitterness opens slowly and poisons his throat, lacerating every uninjured basin; and those that do hurt, too. The world does not want him, the world gives him no respite.  
He is bitter because he is ashamed. He doesn’t like to be ashamed. Not running was an act in the paraphernalia where he decided not to be embarrassed.

And there he stood, though, jaw quivering between the flap of bulging flesh and skin.

He chooses to say it. There is no escape in that place either.

Is there a way out? He may ask himself in the meantime. Is there a way out, when there’s not much left of your body?

The boy, before crossing the edge of the hecatomb, was kissing another boy.

Arms over his shoulders, laughing through the stealth of the alleys, pausing briefly to wonder if everything was as good as it seemed. It was, it was.

He liked kissing other boys, he had discovered. He liked it _very much._

He had to go through several pairs of kisses to make sure the electricity of the first time wasn't unique and a passing thing, he was glad for that. He could keep kissing until he died. He could forget the earthquake of euphoria, of love, that took his spine that original time.

Yes, yes, he could.

He would kiss that boy to death, he would imagine the fruit of other lips, he would thrill because with his inventiveness he had every chance of winning. Boys tasted salty and against his cheeks stung the sensation of hairs about to pop out; he loved that sensation, and it wasn't inherent to _that_ boy.

He could survive it. He could cure various ills. He could make it his refuge.

As he had once said in a letter: he could make peace in all wars with his kisses.

So,  
why doesn't the boy run?

Why doesn't he pay attention to the storm, behind his back, as soon as he hears it?

Why did he not run?

Why did he never realize that the very war of his life was those kisses?

He hears the storm, goes deeper into the false shelter, hears the thunder and hears the words.  
He squeezes the shirt lapels of his false fruit and squeezes his eyes, don't go, don't go, stay here, I hear nothing.

They hear it.

Hey. An exclamation.

Don't go, don't go, don't go, don't-.

 _ **Pinches maricones de mierda**_. ¹

The storm of emotions falls on him, it was just a shot away from being shot. The downpour tastes of a body suddenly letting go, a kiss that is still impregnated and cut off by fear, another boy running.

His companion doesn't think much of it. He runs, runs, runs, almost pushes him on the way to get away as fast as he can and elicits laughter from those now facing the lone boy.

He doesn't go, he doesn't.

He is paralyzed and he couldn’t admit it, he is too busy being surrounded by the crazy ones who do not even reach his height but because they are many more, they think they are more. They are not more.

Their words are still shots. Faggot, faggot, faggot, and he hears no further. He doesn't want to, he can't, he doesn't understand.  
Those young fuckers do not understand the boy’s reaction, they don’t find it funny. He doesn't run in panic and crying, so they can't have a good time later with such an anecdote.

But he doesn't make war on them either, by standing there.

He doesn't look angry, he looks stoic. He doesn't _beg_.

He will never beg, he will never bend -- and maybe that's a whisper that shouldn’t have gone down to ears that would never understand him.

The guys look at each other with wrinkled noses, disoriented at such a display of feelings in front of them. He still doesn't come out of the hiding place where he had been with the one who ran, he doesn't blink, he doesn't swim, he whispers incoherently.  
What do we do with him? It is as if they were saying.

Some slurred spanish is spat from the lips still with enjoyed saliva remaining, they laugh. They could’ve deduced it from his features that he was a pocho, yes, obviously he was a pocho.

They insult him, and he gets angry there.

So he was queer (something he knew), and a pocho.

He really hated being called pocho. ²

Their laughter becomes even more dantesque and the boy, dantesque, remains with his fists against the denim. They take pleasure in the recognition that they have caused him something and yet they don’t see him do anything.  
It is as if he wanted to hit them but he had enough strength not to do it, as if he desisted from his little physical option.

Before he imagined a kiss that wasn’t, now he also imagines the fictitious kisser in question between the fingers that could be marked. Definitely the boy in his mind would beat them better than him.  
He definitely wasn't supposed to.

He wanted to heal with kisses, with the pen, to solve the world with shouts and sweet nothings alike. Was he asking too much, was he asking too much when he was just a little boy who couldn't defend himself, not even in his head?

Because he didn't run, he didn't run.

He didn't run because he had done it long enough, because he was too disciplined and too brave, because between cities he learned that he was tired of walking and walking and putting aside his extreme emotions for those who weren't worth it among his fierceness.  
Because in his naked walk he had never seen the world like that, because he was running from his parents, from the dead little animals, from his friends.

Because Daniel had run and someone had to stay there, didn't he? Someone had to stay there, he decided. Who would pay the piper, then? Him, always him.

Because he had nothing to run away from, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide from.  
'  
Why don't you run, _vato_? Indeed they say, at some point. Vato, why don't you run. Why are you still there and you keep getting angrier and angrier and you don't know anything about nothing and you look angrier and you can't go to your shelter and you can't and you can't and you can't and you can't and....

“Because I don't want to.” he answes at some point, at the air.

For them, that's enough.

For him, too.

The words echo down the alley and the boy is overcome with an air of independence. His eyes fill with tears because he always cries a lot and because his heart is consistent with his mouth: I don't want to, I don't want to.

I don't want to. And I do what I want.

He looks at the sky and a cramp of pleasure runs through him, another one of expectation as well. He sees a bird that seems to be leaving among the clear buildings and thinks that he could definitely grow wings. Was that dying? Was that freedom? To kiss and be left alone? Had he been left alone, perhaps? Alone and secure?

No.

They hadn't left him alone, and he doesn't know it until he hears it: a cowardly blow to the back of his head knocks him down, much more disoriented than before. His body hits the ground and leaves sudden bloodstains on the sidewalk, it feels different from that time he shot out crawling down the street for not having been run over.

It's different, and it's the same. He's helpless, this time.

Maybe he always was, and now the deep fear is perplexing him, much more than the pain that invades him.

He’s turned over only to receive a few blows to the ribs and be dragged; that is the only thing he knows before he becomes unconscious. His legs struggle, eventually giving up in the face of a pair of improper kicks that stop his own. They give up.

He tries to look at the bird again while a pair (thousands) of hands continue to implant themselves, starting that war between them and his stoicism.  
He doesn’t find it, it’s gone, like so many other things in his life in an instant. He feels the iron filling his mouth, choking his throat, caressing his tongue with dread.

The bird is gone, the bird is gone, the bird is gone. The bird is gone,  
he is gone.

Is this the freedom, is this the faintness that...?

He learns that the world, before it begins to die, dresses itself in white.  
The pale veil intermingles with the sky, sees a couple of faces, ignores the black.

That was to die, then, the continuation of a child who had not run, then?

If the world is like that, would you rather die?

In the yearning and the edge of the beyond, then, he defines and decides that he does. In a world full of evil, he doesn't want it. He no longer wants it. He doesn't want it, and he purges it. He purges his happiness, purges his desire, and pretends to meet the one who waits for him on the other side. 

The moon, the bride he will not have, silk and death wear the white veil; and he gets it.

He feels that he dies.

And if he does not, he feels it all the same.

For his soul is already bent.

The boy at some point wakes up and amidst the torture that eats him up (because he screams and can't do it), he thinks: are there worse things in the world than a boy who likes to kiss other boys?

And no, he realizes.

There aren't.

**Author's Note:**

>  **¹)** _**Pinches maricones de mierda**_ :  
> it's something like "fucking faggots" but sounds _harsher_ in spanish bc the exact traduction would be something like "fucking fucking faggots".
> 
> **²)** _pocho_ :  
> in some regions of northern and central Mexico (and southern United States), children born in the United States whose parents are of Mexican origin are also called "pochos", with or without a pejorative connotation.


End file.
